I have not been shy to criticise The Arts Council over the past eight years for certain flawed and damaging policy decisions it foisted upon the arts sector in the months and years following the banking collapse. So I am happy now to acknowledge some positive changes.

The new ‘Arts Grants’ scheme, following on from the ‘Strategic Funding’ programme recently rolled out, will help to restore structure and common sense to the financing of the performing arts in Ireland (and other art forms that I know less about).

Arts organisations, as well as individuals proposing collaborative approaches, can apply for funding for programmes of work over 18 months whereas hitherto unfunded bodies could apply only for a single project. And unlike under the ‘Strategic Funding’ strand, there are no requirements to have been the recipient of a recent Arts Council award in order to apply.

In other good news, once off project funding will continue to be offered, running alongside the new Arts Grants. You may apply under one strand or the other, but not both.

What this means is that those artists who have shied away (or turned away in distaste) from the unseemly competitive aspect of the once-off awards can now propose longer, slow-burn, multi-faceted programmes. In short, companies can behave as companies naturally incline to do and hope to be financially supported. They can plan, say two or three shows over an eighteen month period while developing another in the laboratory or commissioning a writer or engaging in some way with a community. They can also anticipate a modest contribution to the overheads of running an active organisation.

Meanwhile, individuals and small collectives that genuinely prefer to meet up for single projects and then scatter again can still apply for Project Awards. Gradually some beneficiaries under both these strands may choose to pitch for Strategic Funding – and so on. A degree of order and progression and continuity is restored.

Of course it is not a simple business. As lucidly explained by Arts Council staff at clinics in Dublin and Cork this week, the application process for Arts Grants is arduous and complex. You don’t just write your three good ideas on a page and sign your name. The density of form-filling, of partner-searching, tax clearance requirements, financial information, verification of additional funding and so on, simply to apply, will deter many individual artists or younger ensembles without the requisite adminstration training and resources. I would safely speculate that a solid proposal could involve the equivalent of five to seven working days on the part of an applicant – with the deadline only six weeks away. That’s five to seven days without any pay (you cannot pay yourself retrospectively even if successful and you certainly cannot if you lose out); five to seven days you will never get back. If you were to hire someone to do the work, even at cut down ‘arts consultancy’ rates, you would need to invest €1000 – 2000. What unfunded artist or ensemble has that to gamble?

Also, the Arts Grants category, like every other Arts Council scheme, by its nature is still highly competitive and exclusive. There will be more applicants than awards, more money sought than is available. It was ever thus and it shall continue to be thus for as long as Ireland remains bottom of the European league in the matter of percentage GDP and GNP invested in culture. To be fair, however, that anomaly is not of the Arts Council’s making – it is a broader political issue. The Council can only work with what it is allocated. My frustration with the Council over recent years has not been because of the level of funding it distributes: I know the blame for that lies elsewhere. It’s been to do with how the Council chose to approach its national investment responsibilities.

For all the drawbacks, I think that this new scheme begins to address a gaping hole that has existed since the cuts of 2009. That fissure has been very problematic for promising young artists at the point of wanting to make serious career choices. Into that crevice also have fallen quite a few mid-career and late-career artists who were unceremoniously cut out in the thoughtless rationalisation of viable companies seven and eight years ago. Some disappeared. Others have fought to survive, making art in new and different and usually unsatisfactory circumstances. Some of these may dare now once again place trust in a system that can recognise quality, respond to the real way in which artists work and provide space for longer term thinking, imagining and relaxing. Not relaxing by the pool on taxpayers’ money, but approaching their work – the development of the world’s new ideas and visions – in a non-stressed-out or less anxious state of creative readiness

The devil will be in the decisions. There are no new funds from Government underwriting this new strand, only a more strategic redistribution of current limited allocations, and therefore there cannot be winners without losers. Also, in the super-politics behind all this, the implications of the new body, Creative Ireland, which does not appear to be part of any dialogue leading to these developments, may queer the pitch. But focusing on the Arts Council as the historic statutory institution for the development of the arts in Ireland, an institution which, in the view of this writer, lost its bearings for a while but is regaining its ballast, today is a good day.

The introduction of structures that seem to reflect the way things organically form rather than trying from on high to rearrange the very way artists and organisations think is surely a step in the right direction.

I would say, with hand on heart, that ‘Frank Pig Says Hello’ was one of the best pieces of theatre with which I was ever associated; a genuine groundbreaking event.

And everything comes back around eventually. These past three weeks I have mainly been preoccupied with producing ‘Frank Pig’ along with ‘The Leaves of Heaven’, the double bill of plays by Pat McCabe at the Dublin Theatre Festival for Co-Motion Media. I don’t produce any more, other than (reluctantly, because nobody else will) my own plays on tour. But this collaboration between Pat and my fellow Co-Motion director, Joe O’Byrne, is rather special. That’s partly because the last time we all collaborated was exactly 25 years ago when the first part of the double bill premiered; ‘Frank Pig Says Hello’, the stage version of Pat’s award-winning novel ‘The Butcher Boy’, but with a different title and a somewhat different take.

The wonderful new pairing of Darragh Byrne and John Ruddy in ‘Frank Pig’ DTF 2017

I take no artistic credit for the work – my job as producer then, as now, was to confirm bookings, write cheques, ensure posters went up and so on. But to witness Pat, just emerging in 1992 as a soon-to-be superstar of Irish literature, and Joe – a wizard of the stage – collaborate on this magical production was a real privilege.

The show opened at Lombard Street, the original TCD Drama Studies performance space, a former coffin-maker’s workshop. Much of my limited experience of theatre management to that point had consisted of discreetly removing the front row of seats to make the sorrowful numbers look a bit better for actors, in the small independent shows which were all the go by the early 1990s – often quite excellent plays, but definitely minority sports. Suddenly I found myself on box office duty every night with a hit on our hands, gaping down the coffin-maker’s stairs at queues that wound around the corner onto Pearse Street.

Frank Pig was the sensation of the 1992 festival. I recall my heart sinking as I sold the very last ticket on the final night, and then looked down the stairs at the disappointed waiting list only to see the brilliant human rights journalist Mary Holland who I knew and hugely respected. She had no ticket: we had to send her packing. The house was bulging. It helped, of course, that the novel of the same story had appeared a month or two earlier and had suddenly and deservedly been short-listed for the Booker Prize. But there was more to this phenomenon than an opportunistic adaptation of a bestseller.

A THEATRICAL MASTERPIECE

Pat’s tale of the wide-eyed provincial boy whose disappointments become epic and whose innocent confusions charm us all the way to his dreadful murderous deed, is unique in how it succeeded in novel, movie and play form. The play stands out however as a theatrical masterpiece in its own right. We have grown rather accustomed nowadays to the smart two-hander where one or both actors plays multiple roles. In 1992 such clever plays did exist, but none quite like this. The world of Francie Brady, trapped in a pathetic childhood even into early manhood, was conjured up through two extraordinary performances guided by the most subtle direction. To this day, friends who saw the play only once or perhaps twice, still quote from it to me: ‘Ah, the Old Pig Days’, or ‘Hello, hello, hello, hello, hello… helloooo!’ or ‘Am I doin’ good sweepin’, Da, am I doin’ good diggin’?

Two weeks ago I attended the first read-through of the new production by two young actors, one of whom wasn’t even born when the original ‘Frank Pig’ burst onto the scene, and I felt the immense excitement, sorrow, awe and painful laughter that I recall from those days. The current cast are superb, just as the original guys were. And the play is as fresh and immediate as the day it was written. Plus, there is an added bonus. ‘Frank Pig’ is re-presented at this year’s Dublin Theatre Festival alongside ‘The Leaves of Heaven’, a new companion work by Pat, and the two will form a unique double bill. Theatre enthusiasts can, of course, choose to see just one or both. But both, being short, is highly recommended. ‘The Leaves of Heaven’ finds Francie Brady 25 years later, preparing to leave Dundrum Mental Hospital for a new facility, reflecting on old ghosts and new visions. A mature and exquisite work of words, images and moments of belly laughter, it enjoyed a brief run in The Complex last year and is now about to be seen by a much wider audience at Draiocht, Blanchardstown and Axis, Ballymun.

David Gorry and Sean Rocks in the original 1992 production

*********

THE CRAIC WAS NINETY IN ’92

Returning to 1992, when the Dublin festival eventually ended, I sat down one day with Joe O’Byrne in the old Co-Motion office in a run down building on Thomas Street, discussing what we might do next with this artistic gift entrusted to us. “Let’s call Michael Colgan”, one of us said, and we both chuckled merrily at the absurdity of this idea. Michael Colgan ha ha ha! But why not? We didn’t know Mr. Colgan then, other than by the reputation he had already cultivated for himself as a kind of enigmatic Mr. Big in Irish (and British) theatre. Well, we would be just as big! I tilted back the rickety stool that served as my office chair, put both feet up on the table like a classic movie mogul, and turned the dial – yes it was an old black dial phone. I mentioned Pat McCabe’s name to the receptionist. “Just a moment…” Michael took my call. He bought in and brought his legendary producer’s skills to the work, assisting us along the road to international fame.

At Colgan’s invitation, we revived the show for a week at The Gate, and shortly afterwards returned there for four weeks. My mother, Joan, was in her dying days, losing her long battle with cancer at the young age of 62. She came with my Dad (who lived on to be 94) to the grand opening and was introduced to Gay Byrne among others. She had by now resigned herself to the troubling reality that I was going to work in theatre probably for the rest of my life, and had begun belatedly to warm to some of the weird plays I had performed in or promoted. This was a particularly great night, and she whispered to me that she was proud of me. I accepted her praise, knowing I was basking really in the genius of two other men, but I felt I had her blessing to continue at my chosen trade wherever it might take me. I guess I owe that and a lot more to Pat McCabe.

‘Humorous songs and an old piano’ Pat McCabe in 1993

We went on a national tour, opening amidst tensions, in a hotel ballroom in Pat’s home town of Clones. Mischievous remarks he had made in an ironic newspaper essay had been misconstrued and there were rumours of planned pickets. None materialised. Up to the last day or two, however, booking was slow. A local radio announcer implored the people of County Monaghan to buy their tickets in advance from the Clones shop where they were on sale, because, allegedly, hordes of cultural bargain-hunters were coming over to stockpile from Cavan where the tickets were a pound dearer for the following evening. On the night, the reception in Clones was fantastic – emotional and enthusiastic. A very late session was enjoyed by all in the Busted Sofa. The following afternoon we were all packed into the small van, the crew, the actors Sean Rocks and David Gorry, Pat, Joe and me. As we drove out of town on the short hop to Cootehill, we saw an old man with a black bicycle whacking dirt off his trousers, in an exact re-enactment of a scene in the play. “Me trousers, me trousers! Me trousers is covered in grace!” somebody said, and we almost veered off into a field, the van heaving with so much laughter.

The show sold out all over Ireland and then we went to the Royal Court in London. At the previews, in contrast to the raucous, knowing, tearful laughter that had greeted the work at home, the audience reaction was quite muted, although there was loud applause at the end. Londoners were seeing the darkness in the work but, we worried, not ‘getting’ that odd Irish brand of humour that has seen us historically through so much sorrow. At the premiere, however, one man laughed with great relish from the opening moments and very quickly the audience felt released to laugh with him. We wondered who he might be. None other than the late Dave Allen, mythic comedian. That night was spent in an Irish club in London somewhere, Pat singing humorous songs and banging on an old piano, his great buddy, the late Dermot Healy reciting absurdist limericks and everyone delighting in our success.

The show went on to wide international acclaim and toured to the USA and Australia, but I did not travel beyond London. My new day job at City Arts Centre was calling me back. An unknown emerging playwright called Conor McPherson had a show about to open. I look back at that time with great pleasure – a time before I began to write and direct myself, when my work was largely to do with assisting other artists to get started or make advances. Unlike Michael Colgan, I hadn’t a clue, really, about how the business of theatre worked, but I recognised a great artist when I met one and did what little I could. Pat McCabe was, and remains, one of the greatest. I am pleased now briefly to reconnect with the work which projected him from a promising novelist to an international icon, and to be part of introducing ‘The Leaves of Heaven’ where Pat and Joe rejoin forces with a fantastical new dream play of the great anti-hero of Irish writing, Francie Brady, aka Frank Pig.

I am particularly happy that a new generation will get to experience an hour and a half that changed Irish theatre and my life forever!

House of Fun: Brian Mallon as Francie Brady and Mairéad Devlin as a fellow patient. “Leaves of Heaven” 2017

The Dublin Theatre Festival season of ‘Frank Pig Says Hello’ and ‘The Leaves of Heaven’ (which can be enjoyed as single plays or as a double bill) will be officially opened on Wed 4th October at Draíocht, Blanchardstown by Minister for Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Heather Humphreys TD.

The season runs over two weeks at both Draíocht and Axis, Ballymun. Info and booking via Dublin Theatre Festival

Ah – the subsidised days… The Upstate Van: a familiar sight all over Ireland, pictured here in the Cooley mountains – often lent or hired out to colleagues

Anticipating tomorrow’s Theatre Forum touring debate at Draíocht, (and aware that tourng is only one part of a more complex set of relationships involving artists, arts centres and communities) a few random observations from a self-start, artist-led perspective.

1. Artists/Producers need to be audience aware – the gap between experimental innovation in a niche urban festival and the sensibilities of the audience on a typical wet Wednesday in a rural town is vast. But that does NOT mean create conservative crap! It means think very carefully about what you programme, for what context and when. Modern Irish audiences are sophisticated and diverse and I have never seen an audience reject a truly excellent work, no matter how challenging… once they were persuaded to be there in the first place.

2. Touring without subsidy is nightmarishly difficult: gruelling work for crews, long hours, long drives.

3. Working intelligently with quality venues on fair guarantees, however, a skeleton team of 4 (cast & crew) can travel an unsubsidised show in the regions and expect a basic living wage & per diems. Higher numbers of personnel than this on the road (without subsidy) suggest to me skimping on wages which (on tour in particular) is not cool, or else a remarkable skill at negotiating fees!

4. This math applies of course only if nothing goes wrong – like damage to a hired van; a bad box-office split call etc.. One single mistake can turn a successful tour into a personal disaster when there is no subsidy to fall back on.

5. Unless you are a commercial certainty (eg you are a famous TV comedian) avoid box-office-split-only deals, DO negotiate guarantees and never, ever rent – at least this way, if you control your costs, you have a bottom line.

6. I found tech standards universally high in theatres on my last few outings. As well as their technical proficiency, I found techies (as well as FOH people) welcoming, collegial, calm and appreciative of good forward planning.

7. Finally, touring has saved my soul. When funding as we used to understand it, when the implicit support of Arts Councils and media champions, when so many other old certainties were stolen from us by the collapse of the economy, the regional venues were left standing. I am forever grateful to a group of about 25 venue managers across Ireland who took risks on my two recent ‘comeback’ shows and worked with me to find audiences for the art I wanted to make. Above all I am renewed by those audiences – they came, they laughed, they listened, they fell silent, they applauded, (usually on their feet – although that strange habit alone does not always mean a thing was good!) and they restored my own belief in myself and in the joy of theatre.

Below is an alphabetic listing of booking details for all 15 towns and cities where THE BIG FELLOW can be seen during its five week national tour in January and February 2017. To purchase tickets click on the online booking link for your local venue (or call the listed local number). More info on the show can be accessed via the listed venue websites or by scrolling to the description at the bottom of this page.

“If there were no wild boys, there would be no great men”, Frank O’Connor’s mother wrote to him in 1922, when he was a prisoner-of-war at Gormanston camp. This original play, based on O’Connor’s writings, captures the life and times of the wildest boy of them all, Michael Collins, as he graduates from masterminding the most dare-devil raids, prison breaks and escapades of the War of Independence to commanding the official army of a newly-formed state. No dull history lesson, The Big Fellow is an imaginative and entertaining piece of non-stop, high-energy theatre starring Gerard Adlum and Cillian O Gairbhi, with an original score by ex-Waterboys Colin Blakey and atmospheric lighting by Cillian McNamara.

Busy times ahead! The coming two months shall see four theatre projects in which I have a hand hitting Irish stages from West Cork to North Monaghan…

I am proud to announce that BRONTE, A SOLO PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE BRONTE (poster above) which had a single performance recently at the Bronte Homeland Museum in County Down, will have its ROI premiere at Ardgillan Castle in Fingal on December 15th; The following week I will give two special pre-Christmas performances of THE DUBLINERS DILEMMA, one in Dublin and one in Drogheda. Meanwhile THE GORGALS PLAY, collectively written by 24 children in Tydavnet, Co. Monaghan during my residency there, will premiere on Dec 21st in the presence of a government minister, and THE BIG FELLOW will commence a five week national tour in late January.

Produced by Vere Lenox-Conyngham of Anaverna House in North Louth (where it will have a second performance on Dec 16th), BRONTE is a one-woman show featuring a terrific performance by Sharon McArdle. I have been privileged to be their guest director. Different from the fast, episodic, physical style I tend to favour when I get a chance to make new work of my own, it has been a lovely experience to work on this gentle and quite beautiful evocation of the life of a remarkable 19th century English woman with strong Irish links. Booking for Ardgillan is via http://ardgillancastle.ie/bronte-a-solo-portrait-of-charlotte-bronte/ and for Anaverna via 042 93 71490.

Meanwhile, four and a half years after its premiere at The Little Duke in Drogheda and three and a half after its Bloomsday revival at Bewleys Cafe Theatre, THE DUBLINERS DILEMMA will be given a special one-off Christmas performance in each of these venues which were so important to its development. Returning to performing after a short gap of 22 years in 2012 was … well, a challenge, and a game-changer for me both personally and professionally. The show has played in almost every county of Ireland, at several literary and arts festivals at home and overseas in such places as Oslo and Moscow. I am delighted to respond now to requests from some very supportive people to stage it again for just two performances, 6.15 on Dec 21st at Bewleys (booking https://billetto.ie/events/the-dubliners-dilemma-0372ee) and the previous evening, Dec 20th at The Little Duke in Drogheda where it had its first ever performance. The Duke show will have a bonus feature in the form of an animated reading of the Christmas Dinner scene from Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. (booking via https://billetto.ie/events/the-dubliners-dilemma). WARNING: BE CAREFUL TO BOOK FOR THE CORRECT EVENING AND VENUE…

Another event happening also on December 21st and again on the afternoon of 22nd in the presence of Arts Minister Heather Humphries is THE GORGALS PLAY at St. Dympna’s National School in Tydavner, County Monaghan. It was an absolute pleasure to work with the children of 3rd, 4th and 5th class of this tiny rural school a few miles from the Knockatallon and Edenmore primary schools which I attended half-a-century ago in rural Monaghan. My task was to facilitate the children as they dreamed up and wrote down a one-hour play set in modern times in a village a little bit like, but quite distinct from, their own village of Tydavnet. The script has now been taken by Ms Coll, their teacher, herself no stranger to drama, and brought to the stage. I am beyond excited to see it. Open to parents and invited guests – a very special cultural event in a hidden beautiful corner or Ireland.

And then the big one. In the coming days, we shall formally announce a major five-week, 16-venue Spring tour of the Co-Motion Media tour of THE BIG FELLOW, my 2016 play based on Frank O’Connor’s 1937 biography of Michael Collins. Premiered last May in a co-production with Drogheda Arts Festival and some financial support from Louth County Council, the Jan/Feb 2017 tour is an unsubsidised undertaking more daunting than anything I have done in a number of years. Responses to the show on its first outing in Drogheda, at Dublin’s Smock Alley and on a try-out 6-venue tour of the North East/Midlands were very positive. We are hoping for a similar level of audience interest and enthusiasm around the country in the coming weeks. We begin symbolically a mile from Collins’ birthplace in Clonakilty on Jan 24th and conclude five weeks later a mile from the avenue named after him in North Dublin, at Axis Ballymun on Feb 25th, covering Donegal, Mayo, Kerry, Waterford, Wicklow, Armagh and several counties in-between. More particulars and booking links will be published on this website in the coming days.

My induction into the Irish theatre began in Munich, West Germany, in March 1984. I had been three years working in a car factory, blissfully unaware that there existed an active expatriate Irish community in the city. A group of them ran an informal cultural project. They hosted touring musicians from home, ran pub trad sessions and – each St. Patrick’s Day – presented a drama from the Irish repertoire. I received an introduction and joined the troupe as prompter. within weeks I was not so much invited as ordered to direct a play. They knew something that I still did not: that there was something productive I could maybe do. And so began a career…

Back home later that year, I entered Trinity College as a mature student where I became active in the drama and modern languages societies and took every academic Theatre Studies option available. I won a scholarship to return to Germany, to the Freie Universitaet Berlin, where I researched modern interpretations of classic German dramas while training part-time in dance performance. I began work on a translation of Hauptmann’s ‘The Weavers’ which was finally produced ten years later. Somewhere in there I began directing plays in German at Trinity College and met Joe O’Byrne who was likewise directing German language drama at UCD, and over a beer at a party we decided to form a professional theatre troupe.

And so I ran away from college shortly before graduating to join my own company. It was called Co-Motion and within three years it had become a minor legend in Dublin, presenting a diverse programme of plays, mainly translated German Expressionist works and cabaret-style performances, in cafes, galleries and eventually the Project Arts Centre. Joe began writing his own plays, grand spectacles drawing from the physical and visual traditions of Central Europe. I acted and produced, and picked up a couple of good reviews for my comic performances. Our work was quite political, but above all, under Joe’s direction it was robustly physical. We made a lot of noise and – although we did not know it at the time – we influenced the work of a number of young writers and directors emerging just behind us.

It was the late 1980s, a time of remarkable social and political ferment. I spent two years in the Socialist Workers’ Movement, contributing occasionally to their newspaper, standing in solidarity on picket lines for striking college cleaners and glassblowers, and speaking out at earnest if poorly-attended meetings about the British miners, the Iran-Iraq War, the Dunnes Stores strike and other class issues of the day. In 1989 I left SWM to pursue more immediate ‘reformist’ protest activism. I joined with theatre friends Charlie O’Neill, Donal O’Kelly, film-makers Breda Walsh, Pat Murphy and ultimately hundreds of others
to form the artists’ wing of The Miscarriages of Justice Campaign. We joined human rights activists, trade unionists and community groups campaigning for the release of Irish and British prisoners wrongfully imprisoned on trumped-up terrorism charges. We created huge, vivid street theatre spectacles, altering the hitherto dull nature of street demonstrations and contributing to a groundswell that culminated in the release of the Birmingham Six and Guildford Four, and the exoneration of the Maguire Family, Nicky Kelly and others. For a year I was coordinator of the overall campaign group and I learned the value of collaboration with so-called ‘non-artists’. One highlight of that year was addressing a group of British parliamentarians at Westminster along with fellow-campaigners, as guests of a courteous and knowledgeable young MP called Jeremy Corbyn.

I was also drawn into the beginnings of arts policy advoacy in Ireland and was deeply involved in the Independent Theatre Association, a brief precursor of the more sophisticated Theatre Forum of later years. In 1990 I took up a job at City Arts Centre. I became Theatre Programmer, and for five fabulous years I had the privilege of running one of the most influential theatre development crucibles in Europe. Almost every director and playwright of note to have emerged in the second wave of independent theatre-making in Ireland during the 1990s, as well as scores of now-famous actors, made their professional debuts in the intimate confines of the 65-seater studio in the old ships’ chandlers premises on City Quay. City Arts ironically was never intended as an incubation space for professional theatre. It was first and foremost a community arts centre. But along with director Sandy Fitzgerald, gallery manager Tom Weir and other key staff members, we argued that allowing the spaces to be used equally and simultaneously for participatory local arts, disability arts and laboratory professional practice, we might help break down old and unhelpful barriers that saw one kind of creative process as superior or more worthy than another. In small ways, we persuaded emerging arts graduates to look beyond the academic and institutional limits and see how their work might connect with the realities of the inner-city, the suburbs and the wider society in which they were about to practice.

I pursued a few freelance projects during my City Arts Centre years, most enjoyable being directing the Dublin Disability Pride Parade. I began to speak out at arts conferences and write articles, one in particular in response to what I thought an isolationist position that had been adopted by the Abbey Theatre. Out of the blue, I received an invitation from the Arts Council to play an active part in the Review of Theatre in Ireland 1995-96, a year-long undertaking that would research and advise upon the diverse ways and places in which theatre in Ireland was now being made. From this flowed a new Arts Council policy that seemed to endorse and secure the role of independent theatre-making, children’s theatre, T.I.E, youth and community arts and so on, complementing the work of the Abbey, Gate and other institutions.

I freelanced around for a short while and then went to the Director of the Droichead Arts Centre, Paul O’Hanrahan with a proposal to research and in due course establish a professional, community-engaged theatre company in the large town of Drogheda in the border county of Louth. Paul somehow raised £1000 for my project research and from that, for a second time in my life, I formed an independent theatre company that would come in time to make a difference. Upstate Theatre Project was incorporated in 1997 by a Board of Directors comprising local activists and theatre people from Northern Ireland and the Republic. I was appointed Artistic Director. Declan Mallon became Community and Education Officer. Mary Scally was General Manager and we set out to reinvent the regional theatre model.

I finally had a platform to write and direct for the stage, not in the disconnected way I might have done had I gone straight from school to the arts, but rather in a collaborative approach. From the outset we worked with community groups, devising professional actors, designers and others committed, as I guess I was, to ideals of justice, peace, equality and so on. The timing was perfect. In 1998, the Good Friday Agreement heralded the beginning of a new post-conflict era, and the challenges of peace-making became a key theme in our work. I hail originally from Monaghan. The border and the Troubles in Northern Ireland had haunted me personally and cast shadows over my home community all my life. Here was real work to be done.

Sinead Douglas in Epic, Traverse Theatre Edinburgh (2002)

My first full-length stage play ‘Hades’ was set in a mythical border town in the days and months following the signing of the Belfast Agreement. It won a Stewart Parker Award. ‘Hades’ toured all over Ireland culminating in a historic performance at the OMAC in Belfast on the first anniversary of the Agreement, as local and world politicians down the street wrestled with the collapsing peace process. It was later seen in Brussels. My follow-up play ‘Epic’ also toured North and South and transferred to Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. I dusted down and directed my own translation of Hauptmann’s blockbuster classic of uprising and aftermath, ‘The Weavers’; and also a version of ‘Macbeth’ that featured a groovy remote control spotlamp in the role of a British Army helicopter training its futile light beam from on high on the murder of Banquo. Ex-Waterboys composer Colin Blakey was a regular collaborator and artist Maureen Finn designed our costumes, earning an Irish Times Award nomination for her work.

At the same time, Declan Mallon and I along with other hired-in artists worked year-round with community drama groups that we had helped to form, along the border counties, under the Crossover Theatre banner. And we pioneered new ways for existing community groups to create vivid dramas of their own invention, some directly political, but often simply concerned with liberating creativity and fostering community cohesion. Among these was an acclaimed work called ‘Zoo Station’, developed with Termonfeckin Macra, a rural organisation, which became the first ever such community play to feature on the Dublin Fringe programme.

At Peace, Upstate 2007

In the mid-2000s we were joined by artist and manager Paul Hayes who brought new ideas and energy to our work. We had turned our attention to intercultural work, responding to the radically changing demographic of the town and region, and ‘Journey from Babel’ stands as a particular highlight. This was a promenade performance in a disused garment warehouse at Drogheda Port, tracing the history of migration, devised and performed by fifteen local residents of eight nationalities. The project became the subject of an academic study by Dr. Charlotte McIvor of NUI Galway. In the meantime, the company had been selected as a field partner by New York University for its annual Applied and Community-Engaged Theater programme at Trinity College. Through all these years, the Arts Council part-funded the company’s work, matched by the EU Programme for Peace and Reconciliation. The Arts Council however was less convinced than the universities, the European Union or the borderlands communities themselves of the value of our work, and in 2008 it suddenly reduced our funding following one problematic production.

‘At Peace’, a tri-lingual drama developed with members of the Nigerian and Latvian communities in counties Louth and Dublin, and with a professional cast drawn from Lagos, London, Riga and Dublin, failed to please the critics at the 2007 Dublin Fringe Festival. It was under-rehearsed, beset by internal tensions and – doubtless – under-written. The subsequent public spat with the Arts Council was unseemly and hurtful. We appealed their decision to reduce our grant, won the appeal chaired by an independent expert, but were still refused a restoration of the funds. But that same year the economy collapsed and dozens of our fellow companies around the country had their funding radically reduced also – or cut completely. The independent theatre movement as we had known it, fought for it and secured with policy and funding caved in almost overnight. It was devastating.

I took some time out to reflect and pursued a Masters degree in Creative Writing at Trinity College, retaining a part-time role with Upstate but preparing the company and myself for an amicable split which came in 2010 after 13 great years. Re-designated following talks with the Arts Council as a Participatory Arts organisation – but no longer a producing theatre company – Upstate has continued to survive and innovate under Declan Mallon’s direction.

And I entered the curious wilderness of the unsubsidised freelance arts for the first time in 25 years. It took a while to adjust. I gained exciting employment initially, spending two consecutive Winter semesters as Creative Director on the Applied Film, Writing and Performance course at NUI Galway until it was discontinued. I began a novel, only recently completed and now doing the rounds of publishers, and I finished out my time on a long-term public art project I had already begun with Iontas Arts Centre in County Monaghan. But then in 2012, I arrived home one day and found no job offers, nothing in the post from the Arts Council but rejection notes from the prize-giving schemes that were its new substitute for sustainable funding, and a heap of debt.

I wrote a short play for solo performance based on James Joyce’s ‘Dubliners’, mainly to keep sane. My intention was to find an actor to play it. I would direct the work. But one morning I came to the curious view that I should perform it myself. I had not stood on a stage for 22 years, but was excited and magnetised by the idea of performing Joyce. With help from actor/stage manager Bern Deegan and director Gerard Lee as well as dozens of old friends who came out in support, ‘The Dubliners Dilemma’ took off. I self-produced it, forming yet another theatre company, Bachelors Walk, this time with zero subsidy. The show has toured to almost every major venue in Ireland, played literary and arts festivals at home as well as overseas in Moscow and Oslo. Four years on, I still perform it occasionally by invitation. Adapting and performing Joyce helped me to fall in love again with the theatre; to see that while art may be hindered or helped, it is not defined by funders or policy-makers but rather by artists and their relationships with the public.

Over the past few years, I have been engaged on a variety of freelance projects – some marvelous and stimulating, some quirky and ‘left-field’. A highlight was The Road to the Battle project with Louth Craftmark, a devised drama with an intercultural community cast, responding to the contested history of the Battle of the Boyne. Another was a public art development process in the rural district of Killesher/Florencecourt in County Fermanagh. I also directed the European premiere of The Hijabi Monolgues for Axis Ballymun, working closely with producer Niamh Ní Chonchubair, which brought me into contact with the growing Muslim community in Ireland. These freelance opportunities have kept me connected to communities and the collaborative practice that is a key part of my preferred way of working.

But I like to temper my freelance and community-engaged work with artistic projects that derive from my own imagination and compulsions. In 2012 I bought and read a tattered second-hand book at Balrothery flea market. It was written in 1937 by an author I had largely overlooked, about a political figure I had always viewed as the figurehead of a political tendency for which I had little sympathy. Something about the book seized me, compelled me to reconsider my received understandings, caused me to think deeply once again about violence, conflict and reparation – and in 2014 I began working on a new play, ‘The Big Fellow’, based on Frank O’Connor’s biography of Michael Collins.

In 2015 I reconnected with Joe O’Byrne and we formed Co-Motion Media, an echo of the original 1980s company but naturally different in outlook. It is a supportive platform to encourage artists to pursue their innovative projects in a still largely unfunded environment. Joe’s plays ‘The Rising’, ‘The Aran Islands’ (after Synge) and ‘Nighttown’ (Joyce) were produced in 2015-16. And then, in May 2016, in a co-production with Drogheda Arts Festival, I directed the premiere of ‘The Big Fellow’. It has played to excellent critical notices and healthy houses on its first tour and returns for a full national tour in 2017. As well as the two terrific actors Gerard Adlum and Cillian O Gairbhi and lighting designer Cillian McNamara, the team included my old collaborative partners from the glory days of Upstate, Colin Blakey and Maureen Finn.

Producing your own work without either subsidy or a cohesive national infrastructure is stressful, but the imperative to make theatre, to collaborate with excellent artists, to engage with diverse publics and with the themes of our times and of history, does not stop because of failed policy priorities and fiscal rectitude. A platform of peers is helpful, but the workload and the economic anxiety of making a full-scale show, self-producing it, self-designing it, building a set, driving through the night from tour venues to your home and starting out again the next morning, is unsustainable. Two guys end up doing the work that teams of seven or eight did through most of our careers. It is a strange vocation, this theatre-making, this compulsion to engage with society, to connect with community to be part of change through the performing arts. But it is the only profession, in different variations, that I have known since leaving the BMW assembly line in the early 1980s. The applause, the laughter, the deep listening, the animated post show conversations all around the country provide reassurance when money is low. And things are changing again gradually, as political pressure to reinstate and reorganise arts funding intensifies. For now, there is work to be done and we get on with it.

This essay was drafted a few days ago, prior to a historic debate in the Irish parliament on arts policy (Fianna Fáil Private Members’ motion, 22nd June 2016). That debate saw encouraging progress in how politicians across the party spectrum have come around to understanding and outwardly articulating the value of the arts. But there was a conscious refusal from those in power to make any meaningful move to redress the chronic disinvestment in culture in Ireland which is discussed below. ‘Funding increases in line with improvements in the economy’ is not remotely helpful – we already anticipate that. Radical action is needed. Leadership in other words. We watch and wait…

For anyone who may be still struggling to understand just how far things have fallen for arts and culture in Ireland and why it is vital to redress this, here are a few points to consider.

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IRELAND IS A PROUD, CULTURED NATION. MOST ‘RIGHT-MINDED’ IRISH PEOPLE WOULD BE SURPRISED AND EVEN ASHAMED IF THEY KNEW THAT FAR FROM THE MEDIA MYTH OF AN ARTISTS’ HAVEN, OUR COUNTRY IS BY FAR THE WORST IN EUROPE WHEN IT COMES TO GOVERNMENT INVESTMENT IN ARTS AND CULTURE.

DID YOU KNOW THAT FOR EVERY ONE EURO OF PUBLIC FINANCE INVESTED ELSEWHERE IN EUROPE, THE IRISH GOVERNMENT INVESTS ONLY 20 CENT (I.E. ONE FIFTH) IN THE PEOPLE’S CULTURE? WHO LOSES? NOT ONLY THOSE ARTISTS WHO NO LONGER CAN EARN A FAIR WAGE FOR THEIR DEDICATED WORK, BUT HUGE POCKETS OF IRISH SOCIETY ROBBED OF THEIR RIGHTS TO ENJOY A THRIVING CULTURAL LIFE – A SOCIAL AND HUMAN NEED AS FUNDAMENTAL AS A CLEAN ENVIRONMENT OR SAFE STREETS.

TO BORROW THE GOVERNMENT’S OWN PHRASE – IT IS TIME TO CORRECT THE PUBLIC FINANCES AND INCREASE IRISH ARTS INVESTMENT VERY SPEEDILY – AT LEAST UP TO THE EU AVERAGE.

For decades, the debate about “arts funding” has been riddled with myth and ignorance, much in the same way that deliberate misinformation for a long time stifled reasoned dialogue on Marriage Equality, climate change, parenting rights and other movements towards a perceived ‘softening’ of the dominant macho, hierarchical and profit-driven culture. Short-changing in state investment in the arts has disinherited a whole society – and denied a right acknowledged worldwide as fundamental.

Here are seven things we might consider when reflecting on the relationship between the State and ‘the Arts’ in Ireland.

Ireland is currently the worst state under the European Cultural Convention when it comes to investing in our culture. Ireland is not the poorest state in Europe by any means, but, of 24 countries studied in the Council of Europe Compendium Project, our Government is the WORST in percentage terms when it comes to the investment of public moneys on arts and culture for the nation. Why do we pay our artists and maintain our cultural infrastructure at a rate lower than even the poorest peripheral states in Europe when culture is constantly acclaimed as one of our greatest assets?

We claim pride in our cultural achievements and yet disinvest in our culture. Ireland is a proud cultured nation. We take pleasure in the achievement of our film-makers, singers, dancers and poets when (as very often) they are hailed overseas, just as we do with our sportswomen and men. We have celebrated when our actors have done well at the Oscars; when Seamus Heaney won the Nobel Prize; when Riverdance went global and so on. We are proud of our children when they sing at a Feis, perform in a play, make cool videos on their phones, bring home a beautiful painting from school … It is plain wrong in a culturally active country that we invest less than 20% of the European average on developing and sustaining the arts in our nation.

Disinvesting in culture is a form of injustice. These statistics – that we are worst in Europe and invest less than one fifth of the European average – are embarrassing, but it they are much more than that. The failure to invest in the arts represents a deep and hidden injustice in our society. Why? Well, two reasons. It robs us and our children of a healthy, sustainable cultural life – a disenfranchisement as serious as the environmental neglect of lakes or the closing down of playgrounds. Our museums are allowed to run down; our kids have poorer access to instruments in school; community arts centres around the country cannot replace theatre lamps and so on. But – a corollary of this – our living artists are shockingly underpaid. Many live in secret poverty, ashamed to acknowledge it. State policy has systematically removed livelihood opportunities from honest, hard-working artists all over Ireland while at the same time depriving communities of facilities and young people of creative opportunities.

Public investment in arts benefits society regardless of class. It is sometimes misleadingly argued that the question of “arts funding” is a middle-class preoccupation – and that cutting cultural funding is somehow acceptable because the arts are not perceived as a pressing daily concern of rural or urban working class people. This is tantamount to saying that some of our citizens are somehow less entitled to abundant cultural lives than others, because they already suffer other forms of economic or educational exclusion. Quite apart from the obvious class discrimination in this viewpoint, the facts on the ground indicate that it is a dated and inaccurate understanding of what ‘the arts’ is and where cultural activity actually takes place. Every week of every year since the 1970s, from women’s refuges to rural youth projects to children’s creches in inner-city Dublin, children, women and men of all classes and backgrounds have been taking part in community arts programmes, developing their own creativity, often working collaboratively with dedicated professional artists. Resources are scarce and not always fairly distributed, but to suggest that working class people are not interested in the arts in simply untrue and indeed insulting. Do those who claim the arts ‘do not reach’ working class communities not consider – for example – active lone parents’ groups where drama is made, or Youthreach projects with music training, or community creches with dance activities to be part of this working class? Some people it is true – in particular men in certain communities – are still statistically proving to be less drawn to traditional (and often narrow) definitions of the arts such as main-stage drama, opera and galleries. But far more in those communities are intensely creative and engaged in the arts. We need to campaign for the cultural rights of all citizens and ensure fair and intelligent distribution of improved resources to artists, art providers and local creative projects across all of society.

Investing in the arts does not damage your Health budget. It is also misleadingly (and insidiously) argued that increased investment in the arts somehow means decreased allocation for health or other ‘more vital’ public services. This is a discredited and cheap argument peddled occasionally by talk radio hosts or more right-wing, monetarist politicians and commentators who are often against any kind of public spending as a general philosophy. Similar arguments are made against facing our public responsibilities to take in refugees, to protect wildlife or keep up our public parks; and these are rightly rejected by fair-minded people. Abusing and under-paying artists or allowing the heritage of our nation to fall into disrepair does not relieve the health crisis – in fact it compounds it, as arts and access to heritage are proven to improve mental and physical health. Why else would busy cancer hospitals avail of artist-in-residence schemes? Apart from the obvious point that a trebling or quadrupling of the current tiny arts budget would make almost no dent in the overall public finances, including the health budget, there is a more important point which is that this kind of comparison reveals a power mindset that is dismissive of creativity. The government faces a myriad of choices and responsibilities when it comes to the public finances. Nobody argues that a quarter of the army should be laid off, or our state-funded litter wardens forced to volunteer in order to provide more cash for an improved A&E unit somewhere, even though far greater sums could be saved this way, and yet they suggest that it is acceptable to underfund the people’s creativity. Whatever the reason for our low investment in culture, it has nothing to do with hospital beds.

The arts in a modern nation cannot function on amateur volunteering alone. Another outdated argument raises its head occasionally when conversations about cultural investment arise. The jist of it is this: why would you bother paying professional artists when your town has a perfectly fine amateur musical society? By the same argument, why bother paying professional gardeners to keep the herbaceous borders in Stephens Green – aren’t there plenty of hobby gardeners in Ireland growing flowers as it is? Again, the awkward facts come in to play. Most amateur artists when allowed to think about it are the first to see the value of improved arts investment. Contrary to the cheap talk-radio jibe, professionals are not work-shy ‘hobbyists’ looking for money. They are often innovators, highly-trained and intensely hard-working, taking the practice of their artform and the reputation of the nation to outstanding levels and places. Many work directly in and with communities, side-by-side with amateur practitioners: others create work independently that inspires or chronicles the society. They are a necessary part of a complex cultural ecology; not necessarily more gifted, and certainly no more passionate than the best amateurs in theatre, music, dance and so on – but vocationally drawn to work full-time on their craft. The arts needs its professional pioneers and innovators just like science, education and sport. And it is a two-way traffic: working artists in turn recognise that their own practice and the society in which they live benefit from wide community participation. Furthermore, in simple practical terms, even in the current impoverished system, voluntary and amateur arts groups benefit in most counties from subsidised arts centres, cultural festivals, learning environments and public libraries which are managed by arts and literary professionals. Professionalism and volunteering in the arts, just like in sport, are interconnected parts of a continuum.

Our government appears to be fearful of the implications of investment in the arts. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that our politicians are nervous of an expanded arts and cultural life for the society (while paying lip service to artists at every international opportunity.) Why? Perhaps it is a fear of scrutiny, of a widely-educated, enquiring and creative populace, of truly active civic participation which is what the arts engenders? Or maybe it is a simpler, more crude fiscal matter. Perhaps the precedent of acknowledging that we need in percentage terms to make a correction of several fold to meet normal European standards in cultural spending is too alarming? And yet in the past, sudden jumps in spending or a single brave stroke of a pen have seen the introduction of much-needed social reform: free secondary school education; third level grants; a ban on smoking in the workplace; the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

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ADDED 24th JUNE: Having attended the Dáil debate on June 22nd (a Private Members’ motion tabled by Fianna Fáil’s arts spokesperson Niamh Smyth), it was heartening to note the improved discourse of the politicians, from the Minister to the backbenchers. Many were more aware than would have been the case 10 years ago of real, quality arts projects in their local constituencies. NOBODY TALKED ABOUT HOSPITAL BEDS, a clear acknowledgment that that is a different day’s work and a whole separate concern. It was mature and momentarily uplifting. They spoke warmly of artists…

But warming words alone are no help. Whether we take proportion of GDP or percentage of pubic expenditure, we are still Europe’s cultural shame story, when we should and could be its champions. On the ground it can all appear solid – our culture survives, albeit on crumbs. Our tourism is built on a magnificent literary and artistic heritage; our poets are no longer only in the garret but on the stages of bars and nightclubs; our dancers are in the studio but also on Grafton Street busking – Ireland is hopelessly cultured and our people are irrepressibly creative, even in desperate times. But that is neither sustainable nor moral for as long as the people’s money is not reinvested in their culture. Artists are active citizens: they have families, mortgages, rents, bus fares to pay: they require to be remunerated fairly for the service they give.

We need to match the nation’s remarkable artistic talent and instinct with a structured, sustainable, resources and livelihood-driven investment model (and not just once-off experiments or commemorations however fabulous). Difficult as it will be for them, our politicians who have now spoken need to act on their fine words with radical new investment and with mechanisms to distribute cultural funds fairly and intelligently across the nation and into the pay-packets of artists.